CHARLOTTE Emma Aitchison, known by her stage name Charli XC, had a momentous year in 2022.
Her fifth studio album, Crash, had a stunning collection of songs that received great reviews and showed that there is no one quite like the fearless singer-songwriter.
The pop icon continued to make all the right moves with superb songwriting and excellent collaborations. She performed on some of the biggest global stages and was in a different league internationally.
Her quarantine album How I’m Feeling Now, released in 2021, has been acclaimed for perfectly capturing the experience of self-isolation and loneliness in 11 experimental synth-laden tracks. Her previous album, Charli, which came out in 2019, has been a huge hit, reaching the top 20 in the UK charts.
Besides solo works, she also co-writes songs, noteworthy among them is a famous collaboration with Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello for Señorita.
From an early age, she demonstrated an affinity for music, being interested in pop acts such as the Spice Girls and Britney Spears. She began writing songs at the age of 14. Later, she convinced her parents to grant her a loan to record her first album, 14, and in early 2008, she began posting songs from the album and numerous other demos on her official Myspace page.
Charli XCX started performing in her early teens at DIY London raves. She signed to Asylum Records in 2010 at the age of 18, but never confined herself into the mainstream. She rose to prominence with the song I Love It, which was covered by Swedish duo Icona Pop in 2012 who had also used her vocal. It went on to become an international chart topper in 2013. She also released Tumblr-core mixtapes for free. “I’m an upgrade of your stereotype,” she had declared in Femmebot from album Pop 2, her 2017 avant-garde mixtape.
In January, Charli XCX, 30, celebrated her nomination at the 2023 Brit Awards by sharing a racy trio of snaps on Instagram. Her nomination came despite being snubbed in the Artist Of The Year category, which featured an all-male list of nominees despite its gender-neutral overhaul in 2021. Highly vocal on the gender inequality reflected in the Awards, she said, “We’re doing everything right. I don’t think it’s our fault. I think it might be theirs.”
